Hate in Charlottesville: The day the Nazi called me Shlomo

[Mosby]

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (JTA) — The white supremacists, for all their vaunted purpose, appeared to be disoriented.

The city of Charlottesville, thanks to pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, had allowed them — 500 or so — their rally in Emancipation Park, or as they prefer to call it, Lee Park, to protest the city’s plans to remove from the park a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

That worked for an hour or so on Saturday, and then the protesters and the counterprotesters started to pelt one another with plastic bottles — it was unclear who started it. There were gas bombs — mildly irritating — that seemed to come more from the white supremacists. And then the sides rushed each other headlong and there were scuffles.

So Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and, heeding the police, the white supremacists filed out of the park and started walking, north, but to where no one seemed sure. There was talk of meeting at a parking lot, but which parking lot, no one was sure. As they approached the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial, a bucolic hill overlooking an overpass, they sputtered to a stop for consultations and did what marchers on a seasonably warm day do: They sat on the grass, sought shade and chatted.

I had been following at a distance with a handful of journalists and folks who were there not so much to counterprotest but to deliver an alternative message. Zelic Jones from Richmond bore a poster with a saying by Martin Luther King Jr., “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

I climbed the hillock to see if anyone would be willing to talk; on the way, the marchers had studiously ignored reporters, but I thought, at rest, they might be more amenable. It was not to be. One man, wearing black slacks, a white shirt, sunglasses and black baseball cap, shadowed me. He moved to stand between me and anyone I had hoped to interview.

http://www.jta.org/2017/08/13/news-opinion/politics/hate-in-charlottesville-the-day-the-nazi-called-me-shlomo

[love_katz]

1. kick and rec

All of us who have been paying attention all along recognize that the main message of the Republican party is about promoting and supporting hate speech and the violence it ignites. The Republicants have had nothing in their political agenda to offer to the majority of people in our country. They've been politically and morally bankrupt..., no, strike bankrupt and replace it with toxic, ever since Tricky Dick Nixon realized that they couldn't win the election honestly, so he and Lee Atwater enacted their Southern strategy. The other huge problem is the disgusting scum who support them. The only bright spot in all of this horror is that their cruelty and evil are quite blatantly on display. Thank you for your bravery in facing off with these murderous dirt bags. May you always be surrounded by complete protection from any harm.